


Time after Time (Life after Life)

by AgentMaryMargaretSkitz



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending to 1x16, Angst, I did so much research for this fic, I name them after various couples, Reincarnation, Sara and Leonard become Kendra and Carter 2.0, and being happy, but also enjoy the fic, find the other ships, just captain canary reincarnating, more than I have ever done before, pls appreciate the research this history nerd did, sara fights in a war, sometimes, tell me she wouldn't disguise herself as a boy I dare you, the major character death pretty much is because they die in every life, this got a lot angstier that I was expecting, tissues and cookies are available if needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7195847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz/pseuds/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they died, they thought it was the end. Turned out, it was only just the beginning of their story. A Captain Canary reincarnation fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time after Time (Life after Life)

**Author's Note:**

> On AO3, I've been posting my Captain Canary ficlets that I've been writing on Tumblr. At the end of a particularly angsty one, I mentioned a thought that I had had the day that I wrote said drabble. It was meant in a joking way to cheer up the readers, suggesting that one imagine Leonard and Sara reincarnating all throughout time like Kendra and Carter.
> 
> Turns out people really wanted it to become a fic, and I got pulled into writing it as a prompt. So now about a month or so, it's finally finished. It is an AU that I did start before 'Legendary', and it's turned out a lot more angsty that I was expecting, so sorry ahead of time if there are tears. Also, in various lives, I ended up naming them after a lot of OTPs I have. Not every life has them named after an OTP, but if you can find the ones that are, then kudos and cookies to you!
> 
> Now, enjoy the fic!

            In the first life, he dies at the Vanishing Point. Her kiss is still on his lips, and her name is in his head along with two others. Somehow, hers is ringing the loudest. And he can’t help but think _“If only we’d had more time….”_

            Her death comes in the final battle with Savage. She’s fighting for the future, for Laurel, for Leonard. As the end draws near for her, she ends up going head to head with Savage when he’s about to kill Kendra. The immortal stabs her with his knife, one that had been unknowingly exposed to the meteorite that’s in his possession. It deals Sara a fatal wound, not one even Gideon can fix.

            Kendra swings her mace and kills Savage as he lets Sara fall to the ground. As she lands on the ground, she hears people running toward her. She knows that she’s dying. The feeling is too familiar. Someone, maybe Rip, is shouting. Another person is telling her to hold on as her senses begin to fade. She almost wants to say that it’s Mick, but the voice sounds so broken that she’s not sure if it’s actually him.

            Somehow, she finds herself thinking of Leonard. As terrible as it sounds, she’s a little relieved that he doesn’t have to watch her die. It’s the worst thing ever, watching someone you care about die. But she finds her thoughts turning to the last day that he was alive, how he’s talked about thinking of them and the future. Sara wishes that she’d told him then.

 _“If only we’d had more time…”_ is her final thought as she dies for the second time.

* * *

             In another world, they would have had a happily ever after. Instead, they learned too late that they loved each other. Their time had run out too soon. In their last moments, their final thoughts had been about each other, both wishing that they had been able to have more time.

The universe decides to give them that.

            Leonard Snart does die at the Oculus Wellspring in the Vanishing Point, and Sara Lance does die for a second time in the final battle against Vandal Savage. However, the explosion at the Oculus sends Leonard into the time stream, scattering him all throughout time to be reborn again and again. The combination of Savage’s meteorite-exposed knife and remnants of the Lazarus Pit on her create a similar effect for Sara.

            From the beginning of time and the existence of humans, they begin to reincarnate over and over and over again. Sometimes, they are born around the same time. In other lives, one of them is born a few years before the other, depending on how far apart they died in the previous life. Their names, their families, their experiences growing up change in every life, but they always find each other somehow. In a sense, they are a second version of Chey-Ara and Khufu, soulmates reincarnated over and over, minus one evil immortal.

* * *

  _Pompeii, Italy, 79 AD_

            They do know each other in every life, but they don’t always remember each other. Sometimes, they remember too late. Other times, disaster strikes before they can. Humans are still young to the world, and don’t know the horrors and disasters it holds. The first time they are able to remember is 79 A.D.

Both grow up in the city of Pompeii, mere streets away from one another. He is only a few years older than her in this life. His name is Quintus. Hers is Sabina, although he doesn’t learn this until much later. Sometimes, he hears whispers of the golden-haired girl that lives in the city. Some people say that Ceres or Vulcan has blessed her family. Other people say it comes from her mother, a woman from outside of Pompeii. Whatever the case, he’s intrigued.

            He finally meets her in the marketplace when they are both grown, but still young. Each feel a strange spark, a connection between them instantly. Witty banter ensues between them as their paths cross more and more. Quintus learns that Sabina is different from the other girls her age. She is tough, proud, fearless, hates to be assumed for less than what she is. Both keep gravitating toward each other, feeling the need to admit an affection, a love they hold for the other. But neither one says anything just yet.

            One evening, they meet out on the beach together and he kisses her. As soon as their lips met, memories flash before his eyes. He remembers the first life that he ever lived, how it ended, and fractions of the lives that he has been living since then. And in every life, he sees Sabina.

No, not Sabina. Sara. Her true name is Sara. And he is Leonard.

            When he pulls away, she’s smiling at him. She remembers her past lives and him too. Once again, their paths are crossing each other’s. They are still Quintus and Sabina, but they are also Leonard and Sara again.

            Then they remember where they are, and what will happen to the city. Neither knows how long Pompeii has left, but the sooner they leave, the better. Both want a future together still, the me and you. They agree to save up for a passage off Pompeii before volcano day. It’ll mean leaving their family and friends that they have in this life behind, but they do want the future.

            The next day, there are tremors that shake the city right until the disaster strikes. All hell breaks loose as Vesuvius erupts. Everyone is in panic, but she runs to find him. He does the same, and they end up meeting in the middle of the city.  Ash rains down on them as they choke to death. There is no outrunning this, they both know this.

This is the first time they die together, but not the last.

Years later, when the city is excavated, two sets of human remains are found huddled in a last embrace.

* * *

  _France, 1349_

            Mary knows she’s always been an odd child. People told her parents this all the time when she was little. No little girl is so serious, and her parents have never had anything to do with it. That’s just the way she is.

            She chooses to ignore what people say about her. Besides, there’s a reason to why she’s this way. It’s because she ponders so much over her dreams. All her life, she has had them. In them, Mary sees places that she knows are long gone and lost. There are also terrifying towers of metal and glass, horrible soldiers, all manners of horrid things that are frightening. But there’s also a man she always sees in her dreams. She can’t explain it, but she feels like she knows him.

            Mary never shares these dreams with anyone. If she does so, she knows that she will be accused of witchcraft. So she keeps the dreams to herself as she grows up. Telling someone about the mystery man in her dreams will only bring her trouble. But she can’t help but wonder if he’s out there, searching for her.

            The sickness strikes the town she lives in when she’s a grown woman. It’s a terrible plague that spreads like wildfire. The longest Mary’s ever seen anyone survive it is three days. People start to panic, turning to the church or looting. Mary’s father leaves home one day and never returns, but she knows that he’s dead. That leaves her by herself, given her mother dying long ago.

            Visitors travel through often, offering cures for the plague. It’s being called ‘the Black Death’. Unlike her neighbors, Mary doesn’t waste time with any of the newcomers. They are thieves and liars, conning people out of what little they have until they succumb to the disease too. She hates all of them.

            Then, one day, there’s a knock on her door. A voice on the other side is offering a cure for the Black Death. Mary opens the door, prepared to tell him off when she sees him. The crook in front of her is the man in her dreams. He is the one she has been seeing her entire life.

And Mary remembers who he is, who she is, and what they are and have been. Friends. Lovers. Husband and wife. And once, not long ago, parents.

            In this life, he is called Matthew. He’s been searching for her for a while. The ‘plague cure’ has been his way of being able to travel so he could find her again. Matthew, no, Leonard asks her to come with him. Escape the plague like he’s been doing and travel together on the road. Nothing is holding her to the town, so she agrees immediately.

They leave together the next morning. Together, Mary and Matthew spend four days together on the road before he wakes up on the fifth day feverish.

Two days later, Mary is burying him as she feels the symptoms of the disease rack her body more and more.

The next day, a group of charlatans find her dead by the freshly dug grave.

* * *

  _Caribbean, 16 th Century_

            If the universe is allowing him and Sara to have more chances at life, it would make sense that it’s allowed to get in a few shots at them. But his name in this life is just ridiculous. Even if he gets to be a pirate with the woman he loves, he still hates it.

“I can’t believe my parents named me that,” he grumbles one night in their bed in after they both remember.

Sara, Elizabeth in this life, laughs beside him. “It’s not too bad. You lived with it until you met me.”

“But I always hated that name. I never understood why. Now that I remember, I do know why.”

“Bartholomew is not that bad,” she murmurs, a teasing grin spreading across her face. “At least you never went by Barry.”

“Don’t. There’s a reason I go by my last name.”

“Captain Turner,” she rolls the name over her tongue. “It does have a nicer ring than Bartholomew. But I know I’ll always prefer Leonard.”

            Their story of how they met in this life was certainly an interesting one. It was at a port, where he was about to be arrested, but she broke him free. Together, they escaped the soldiers stationed there, stole a ship, gained a crew, and took to the high seas. Remembering each other took a little while, but eventually they both did. The memories of their other lives are still coming back to them, but they still know each other from their first lives, and how much they love each other even after all the years and lives.

            Life on the high seas suits them. They captain their vessel, the _Waverider_ , together. Their crew respects both of them. Elizabeth gained it instantly after laying down the boatswain when he tried to grope her. Everyone aboard the ship learned that day that despite her pretty face and formal upbringing, she is not to be messed with. Ever since then, she’s been Captain Liz to the crew.

            They spend a long time in their life and love every minute of it. At one point, they land at a port and met Carter, although he’s not called that in this life. They end up directing him to a tavern where they saw past Kendra working in, promising that he won’t regret it. It ends up being the first time they bring the Hawks together, but not the last.

            After six years together, their luck runs out. A large bounty has been placed on their head for liberating slave ships. When the company’s ships filled with soldiers surround them, the _Waverider_ is outmatched. Holes are blown in the hull by cannons, and the once majestic ship begins to sink. They are below deck trying to get a cabin boy out when a fallen beam impales Elizabeth in the side against the ship. Bartholomew gets the kid out before running back to her.

“Go!” she pleads him once he realizes she cannot be freed as the water reaches their torsos.

Instead, he takes her hand. “I won’t leave you.”

Besides, a captain always goes down with the ship.

* * *

  _Salem, Massachusetts, North America, 17 th Century_

“Do you ever wonder if we can fly?” she asks one evening after their children are asleep.

He shrugs, uncertain. The thought has crossed his mind in other lives. “I doubt it. Never really felt the urge to hawk out. Besides, I think the actual lovebirds became that because they were exposed to that meteorite.”

“Speaking of which,” Anne suddenly smiles at him. “How long do you think it’ll take before they remember each other?”

“Who knows? Hopefully soon though.”

            A few months later, the witch trials begin. A judge arrives in town to help oversee them, and it’s Savage. Kendra and Carter, or Betty and John, are the first accused of the craft and sent to jail to be executed in the morning. Anne and David wait until the dark of night to sneak into the jailhouse and set the people who will eventually become their friends loose. They learn that they have remembered who they are, and John remarks that they look familiar as they get them out.

            The Hawks take to the night sky, flying away from Salem and the witch hunt fever that as possessed it. The other reincarnated couple is watching from below when Savage finds them. They barely have time to react before he slits their throats, furious with them for letting his prey escape.

Betty and John do return to Salem to rescue their saviors’ daughters, and raise them in Rhode Island until Savage tracks them down again.

* * *

  _Massachusetts, 1775_

            She cuts her hair and joins the troops without a second thought. No one is able to pick out that she’s actually a girl in boy’s clothing, and the ease of her deception pleases her. Her family wouldn’t approve, but she doesn’t care. Caroline refuses to let her mother’s views on how a proper lady should act control the way she lives her life. But she does leave a letter for her favorite brother to tell her goodbye.

            As she assembles on her first day with the rest of the volunteers, one catches her eye. His name is Thomas. Something about him feels so familiar, as if she has seen him before. But Caroline knows that she hasn’t. She’d know his name if that was the case.

            She and Thomas bond well together. They get along with each other, but are distant from the others. Before he joined up, he worked in a carpenter’s shop. She lies that she worked in a tavern rather than telling him the truth, which is that her father owns one of the most profitable shops in the city. Thinking of home reminds her of her best friend, who would no doubt be laughing right now at her dressing as a boy and calling herself Charles. Not to mention teasing her about her feelings for Thomas that she is trying so hard to deny.

            They survive the first battle. Everyone else deals with the loss and trauma of it in their own way. She and Thomas stick together though, both feeling familiar to it. They both shot redcoats in the battle and watching their friends fall. Yet somehow, it doesn’t feel like it’s the first time they’ve been in a battle.

            Not much later, they’re ambushing some British troops when he’s shot in the heart right next to her. In that moment, as she watches him fall, all her other lives come back to her. Caroline drops to the ground beside him, ignoring the fact that she’s allowed herself to be an easy target. Thomas just looks up at her and smiles. He looks happy in his last moments before his eyes close for the final time in this life.

After that, Caroline wears his hat until she’s killed in a skirmish three months later.

* * *

  _Paris, France, 1794_

            They are children of the revolution. It has been a constant in their lives for as long as they can remember. All their lives, it has been all about the revolution. They’re taught to hate the monarchy and the nobles and anything related to the old decrepit order that has been in charge of France for far too long. After the monarchy is overthrown, both are brought to see the execution of Louis XVI, former king of France. Their families and friends tell them that a start of a new era has begun. They’re right about that.

Only they never knew how bloody it would become.

            At first, it is just the nobility, the ones disloyal to the new government. After the king’s death, and later the queen’s, they understand this, but are still a bit puzzled. But then the deaths begin to pile up more and more. Ordinary citizens begin to become accused of disloyalty and are sent to the guillotine. Anyone who holds a grudge against someone just needs to say they are a traitor around a member of authority and the accused will be sent away by the end of the day.

            It’s in one of the prisons where they met after both have been charged with disloyalty. They remember who they are in there as they wait every day to see if their names are on the list of the guillotine’s victims for that day. It strikes them odd how in their previous life, they were fighting across the ocean in another revolution and died doing so. Their deaths will be much quicker here than they have been in other lives though if their names are read off the list.

            Fortunately, the Terror ends with Robespierre himself accused and being executed by the guillotine. All the accused are released, and they are alive together. Neither has any family left to go back to, so they do what they always do and move on together. Paris is left behind them as they set out on their own again. Neither is willing to stick around in that city, not with it still in such turmoil.

            Henri and Nicole, as they are named in this life, eventually find their way to England, and later London. It’s dirty and crowded and loud, yet they fit in. Nicole is reminded of the future Star City that she sees in her memories and dreams, particularly of a section called the Glades. But for all its flaws, London is an improvement over Paris.

They spend their days working in decent jobs in the city. At night, they take to the shadows of the streets and alleys. The two of them become vigilantes. After so many lives, she still remembers the training she received in her first life and has taught him over the years after they’ve found each other. They fight similarly now against the rapists and muggers, and she can’t help but tease him about how he is now stopping crimes instead of committing them.

This is their first life as vigilantes, and the first time in a long time that they have a peaceful ending.

* * *

  _United States, 1860’s_

            They remember on their own during this life. Each dream about the other, wondering where they are, what their name is in this life, what they do, etc. Both Charles and Elsie (her real name is Elizabeth, but she’s always been Elsie) think about ways to help the other remember when they met one day. Luckily for them, there is no need for these techniques when their first meeting does take place and they call each other by the names of their first life.

            The first meeting is after one of the first battles of the war. He is a soldier, she is a nurse. Fooling the army into thinking she was a man did not fly this time, so she decided to take to nursing on the battlefield. He brings in his injured friend, the one he grew up with in this life. The man’s leg has to be amputated below the knee, and Charles- Leonard is silent but relieved when he hears the news. She realizes that the bond the two of them had in this life was as strong as the one he had had with Mick.

Time passes by, and they take every advantage they can to spend time together. She has a journal with her a lot. One day, he finally asks why she has it.

‘We have so many memories now,” is her reply. “And I don’t want them to be forgotten.”

“You won’t have those to help you in the next life,” Charles reminds her.

Elsie smiles. “That’s why I’m sending them somewhere safe. If our friends in our first life ever figure out we were Carter and Kendra 2.0, then they’ll be able to learn through these. They’d probably be curious to find out what became of us.”

            Her nursing unit ends up traveling with his army unit, so they are not separated from each other. At night, Charles and Elsie are Leonard and Sara once more. They talk about plans for the future after the war ends. He suggests that they go west toward Star City. A fresh start is needed after all the pain and misery and suffering they have seen in this war. It is most definitely not their first, but the Civil War is looking to be one of the worst wars they have become involved in. History books weren’t wrong about it.

            It’s at Gettysburg where their hopes and dreams of a post-war life go out the window. Elsie has a vague recollection from her first life that this is battle that goes on for days. She tells Charles this when they met up the night before it begins and asks him to be careful. There have been too many lifetimes where he has died in front of her. She hates when it ends that way, and doesn’t want this life to have that ending.

            She gets reckless on the day the fighting starts and goes into battle. It’s all too easy for her to steal a uniform, and she is able to tuck her hair up in a hat. Everyone is so focused on the fighting, and no one is any the wiser that she is out there. Elsie doesn’t even tell Charles she’s going out there.

            Gettysburg is the first time she’s seen action up in front of her in a long while. There are gunshots and cannons going off, screams and battle cries and painful moans and wails. Blue battles gray, but red overtakes the colors of the uniforms. A cannon goes off in her direction, and she drops low. The man (although he is really just a boy) who was beside her does not fare so lucky. His decapitated body lands beside her, bringing back memories of the guillotine in France.

“Sara?!” a voice shouts over the din of the fight.

            It’s then that Elsie realizes that her hat has fallen off, exposing herself. Charles is running toward her now. When she opens her mouth to reply, two bullets pierce her chest before she can get the first syllable out. She falls to the grass, her hand on the blossoming red spot where her heart is.

            He screams her name, her first name, and is beside her in an instant. They both remember the American Revolution, where he was the one dying in front of her. Now, their roles are reversed. Charles pleads her to hold on. Elsie just smiles and tells him they’ll meet again before the light fades from her eyes.

There is not much time for him to grieve once she goes. He barely gets a minute before an enemy shoots him in the head.

* * *

  _Victorian London, England, 1880-1890’s,_

It’s one of their happier lives that they spend together, save for its ending and the beginning confusion.

             Clara doesn’t understand why she always sees the same strange man whenever she is on her way to work. It feels like he’s watching or following her. She does worry at first, wondering if he is the murderer that people have been whispering about. But he doesn’t seem to have that aura about him.

            Finally, a few months later, she sees him across the street one day, watching her again. *Clara huffs and crosses the street, ready to confront him. He turns, as if about to walk away, but she stops him. As she looks up at him, face to face for the first time, it comes back to her. He is Leonard and Charles and Quintus and Bartholomew and Matthew and Henri and David and so many other names that she struggles to remember. Even though she knows she has been through this before many other times, seeing him again makes her feel happy. Remembering fills the empty piece she has always felt in her life.

“So what are you called this time?” she asks.

He grimaces before he tells her. Clara can’t help but laugh at the face he pulls when he says his name. It’s Basil Smith. Almost as bad as Bartholomew.

            They reconnect again, as they always end up doing. The two of them become vigilantes again, just as they had done a few lifetimes ago in the same city. No one remembers them from the last time, so returning to their roles is easy. Clara has her eyes set on taking down the murderer, who the authorities have been calling ‘The Ripper’. Now that she’s remembered she was Sara Lance, she knows what he has done, and she wants to stop him before he takes any more lives.

Turns out they’re not the only ones who want this.

            It is two years after their reunion when Clara and Basil finally track him down. The Ripper is about to claim another victim. As Clara is about to strike from the shadows, the young woman who the Ripper has lured into the alley suddenly sprouts wings and flies up into the air. It distracts the Ripper long enough for her and Basil to strike from the shadows. Another winged man swoops down from the top of a building and helps them finish him off for good. There is something familiar about him, both of them, but she can’t remember.

            They know them too somehow. After the Ripper is lying dead between them, the hawkman removes his mask as the other woman flies down beside him. Their wings fold up behind their backs. Clara suddenly feels memories flash before her eyes. They were in her first life. She remembers seeing the woman with her wings unfurling as she takes to the sky. Then there is another life, one where both are thanking them before taking to the sky.

“I know you,” the man says finally. A mustache adorns his upper lip, one he didn’t have in the other lives where they met him. Carter, that’s what he was called once. “You saved us from someone.”

“Vandal Savage,” Basil responds. “We know all about him. And you two.”

The woman narrows her eyes. “And how is that?”

“Because one day, you’ll be recruited to stop him,” Clara explains to them, memories of her first life circling through her brain. “And we’ll be with you.”

            She then tells Kendra (no, she’s not Kendra Saunders yet. But she will be) about how they will know each other in the future. How the journals she is writing again in this life are being sent across to America to a postal office to be delivered to STAR Labs in May 2016 on the day after she dies at the hands of Savage. Clara hopes that she will remember this in her later lives. Then again, Kendra didn’t seem to have any memory of her on the Waverider.

            Both Basil and Clara agree with the Hawks to keep an eye out for Savage. The two of them are uncertain whether or not Savage will remember them as well. The last time they knowingly crossed paths with him was in Salem, during the witch trials almost two hundred years ago. Even for an immortal, that’s quite a long time. Besides, there is no way he can remember everyone he has ever crossed paths with.

            But both do worry. In this life, they end up having a son, their first. There have only been three other children in their other lives, all girls. Olivia had been an only child in the thirteenth century. Dinah and Elizabeth had been their daughters in Salem. Just like his sisters, Michael Jefferson Smith means everything to them. If Savage remembers them and finds out about Michael and hurts him, they will never be able to forgive themselves for the rest of their lives.

Basil and Clara tell him one day about their situation when he is old enough. Michael grows up knowing his parents are different. They teach him to protect himself in the event that Savage discovers they are not the only couple who reincarnates and comes after them. He hears stories about ancient lands and times that no one else remembers. All of it gives him a love of history that persists throughout his life.

A fire starts in the building they live in when Michael is still young, barely eleven. They don’t realize one is going on until Michael wakes them up, telling him that he smells smoke. When it hits their noses, they hurry to get him out of the building. Their son clutches tightly to his mother’s current journal in his arms, refusing to leave it behind. But they get him out.

Once they get him out, they remember there are still others in the building that is slowly starting to catch fire. After living so many years and seeing so much death, both of them will do whatever they can to save the life of someone who needs it. They decide to go back in and get their neighbors out. Both promise Michael they will be back. He nods, serious as ever despite the fear in his eyes as he watches them run back into the flames.

When they’re back inside, they get all the other neighbors out first until only they remain. They run down amidst the flames, handkerchiefs over their mouths. Basil pulls her back suddenly as part of the ceiling cave in before them. The flaming wreckage blocks their exit, trapping them inside the building. As they realize there is no way out, both Basil and recollect another life, one that ended in flames and fire. It appears that this one will be ending the same way.

When dawn breaks and the wreckage has cooled, Michael finds the burned bodies of his parents holding each other and screams. Two of the neighbors whose own children are long since grown or gone take him in. They have known him and his parents since he was a baby, and they owe his parents for saving their lives.

Years later, an adult Michael goes to America. He works as a banker, meets someone, and gets married. They end up having three children. One of their daughters grows up to marry a man with the surname of Stein. In 1950, they have a baby boy.

He’s named Martin.

* * *

  _Missouri, United States, 1927_

            Steve’s life is all set out before him. As soon as he’s old enough, he starts working at his father’s business. One day, he’ll be the owner, given that he is the eldest son. That’s fine and everything, but Steve feels like there’s more out there. He wants adventure, a nice good thrilling journey.

            The adventure comes when he goes to the bank one day to make a deposit. While he’s there, an armed gang arrives and holds up the bank. As he’s on the ground, Steve gets an odd vision, although it feels more like a memory. In it, he’s the one pulling off a robbery in a bank. But before he sees anything else, he’s snapped out of it when one of the robbers, a small, lithe woman with blonde hair in a bob cut, pulls him up to his feet. She keeps a gun on him as she announces that he’s coming with her after they’re done with the vault.

            When the gang leaves the bank, he is put in the car with the blonde. She’s handcuffed him to the car door so he can’t try and hurt her. Although he doesn’t know why this thought comes to mind, given he’s never been a violent person. But Steve knows better than to try and attack the blonde. He saw her take down a man twice her size with her bare hands when the gang first entered the bank. She is definitely not one to be messed with, but there might be the chance he can talk his way out of this.

“If you’re trying to use me as a ransom, then I should tell you it’s a bad idea. My family isn’t the Rockefellers.”

The blonde shakes her head and laughs. There’s something about her that makes him feel as though they’ve met before. “Not why I picked you up, Leonard.”

Leonard. The name feels familiar, although he’s never heard anyone call him that before. “My name is Steven.”

Her shoulders sag as she sneaks a peek over her shoulder, looking saddened. “You don’t remember yet, do you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sit tight, Steve,” she sighs. “Get ready to hear the story of us.”

            At the end of her tale, Steve finds out that apparently, he and Margaret (the blonde) reincarnate. She has remembered this for some time now, just after she joined the gang. Ever since then, she’s been trying to find him, casing each town the gang hits trying to find him. Although running into him at the bank wasn’t expected, just coincidence. She hadn’t even known he lived in that town.

            Everything she is telling him sounds utterly crazy, and he should not believe her. But somehow, it feels right. When Margaret tells him she was first born as Sara Lance, he has a strange memory seeing her with longer hair in a white outfit while fighting with a staff. She tells him a story about them in the Civil War, and he remembers seeing her in the moonlight and on the battlefield. All the stories he hears about their ‘past lives’ trigger memories of things and events he doesn’t remember seeing in this life.

            At some point, the sun sets and he nods off. When he’s shaken awake the next morning, Steve grasps who he really is and remembers. Pieces of the puzzle fit together from what she has told him the day before. There are still some jagged pieces of his lives that are missing, but the important thing is that he knows who he is and was. He remembers her, and how he feels about her. There are enough pieces from his first life that he can fit together to laugh at their current situations in this life.

“I always wonder what it would have been like to have been in a gang in the twenties,” he teases when he tells Margaret- Sara- that he remembers.

She smiles at that. “And here we are.”

 _“This isn’t Bonnie and Clyde.”_ She had said something like that in their first life.

            Steve ends up staying with the gang. He ends up helping plan heists for them. It’s a role that he falls into easy and ends up enjoying. The buildings in this time are a lot easier to get into, and the things they want to take are a lot easier for them to get their hands on. Margaret goes with him on all the heists and helps out with many. Both have gained much knowledge throughout the ages they’ve lived through, and some of it comes back to them when they need it.

            Their activities draw the attention of the authorities. Prices get placed on their heads. The other gang members get skittish. Steve and Margaret are all too aware that all good things must come to an end. Together, they agree to do one last run before they get out. They can change their names, get new identities. Hopefully, that’ll work.

It really does end up being their last run when the police ambush them as they flee the scene and fire at their car. They’re killed instantly in the hail of bullets.

This isn’t Bonnie and Clyde. That’s what she had said.

Yet they go out like them.

* * *

  _St. Roch, 1970’s_

            The next life after they die in the shootout is short. They’re born in Europe, but die in the carnage of yet another war as children. Neither of them got the chance to meet each other or even remember. But the life after that ends up better. There’s relief for both of them when they meet up again and remember each other. No matter how many lives they live, both Sara and Leonard are all too happy to see each other in every life. The universe may have given them more times together, yet it never feels like they have enough.

            Melinda Mason meets Phil Martin in a bar in St. Roch in 1971. Both feel a familiarity to the place. When they see each other for the first time, the connection between them happens instantly. With time, they start to see and remember each other. When it all comes back to them, they’re in the bar where they first met and realize it’s the same one they visited with Mick so long ago. It amuses them greatly while also giving them a serious case of nostalgia. The only thing that would make it even more perfect would be if they could play their song, but it hasn’t been released yet. Melinda and Phil remember it well though. He recollects them humming or singing it to their son long ago when he was still a baby.

            During this life, two things from their first life crop up. The first is that they meet Aldus Boardman in 1972. Rip had taken a group to meet him in 1975, although they hadn’t been invited and ended up going to the bar with Mick. When their paths do cross with Aldus, they decide to talk to him about Savage, see if they know anything that can be put into his journal. He is skittish when they approach him about Savage, which is reasonable when they consider it. But after they explain who they are and he does some digging into them, Aldus trusts them. His knowledge of Savage is loose, and they end up meeting with him to help build it up for when the Waverider lands in 1975.

            Aldus asks them if they’ve ever met his parents, given their knowledge of Savage. They admit that they do, and tell him of the few encounters that they have had with them. Both struggle to remember some, but Phil and Melinda give him accounts of the ones he does remember.

“They once told me that they felt they weren’t the only ones who reincarnated,” Aldus explains to them when they meet one last time before Phil and Melinda move out of St. Roch to Ivy Town. “There were two people who would show up in a few of their lives and guide them to each other, or helped them thwart Savage for some time. Now I understand it was you two.”

They tell him not to put that detail about them also reincarnating in his journal. Both have seen the journal in the future, and there is no mention of them in it. Melinda jokes that she can practically hear Rip lecturing them about the timeline.

            Their second surprise that they encounter, and by far one of the most shocking events they’ve ever come across, is their great-grandson. They’re able to trace Michael’s family in this time. By now, he is dead, which saddens the both of them. However, they do learn they have a great-grandson. They are shaken when they find out about him, or more appropriately, who he is. Martin Stein.

As soon as they learn this, both Melinda and Phil hope that if those aboard the Waverider ever learn of their fates, then they never find out about this. Stein was mortified about his younger self flirting with Sara. He would be even more so if he found out that she’s his great grandmother.

            Phil and Melinda do end up keeping an eye out for him. He’s family, and even though he is quite arrogant, he is a good man deep down. They do get to meet him once. It’s 1974, and they’re still in Ivy Town when he bumps into them on the street, nose deep in notes of scientific gibberish. He apologizes and helps pick up the groceries that they were carrying that hit the ground in the collision. The only causality is a carton of eggs, and he offers to buy another for them. But they tell him that it’s no bother, and that’s it.

A few months later, they send in an anonymous donation to his department that allows him to build the device that his older self will one day come to seek out.

* * *

  _Star City, 2084_

            They are vigilantes this time around, a now obsolete occupation with the Justice League. She has her bo staff again. He has reclaimed his cold gun from STAR Labs, feeling a strange pull to it when he broke into the place once. Whispers are said about each other, and it’s what brings them together. Their first meeting takes place on a rooftop. When the memories return, they realize that it’s the same one they first met on in 2016.

            Lincoln and Octavia decide to become a team. They fall into an easy routine of fighting the remaining muggers and thieves in their cities side by side. It’s not the first time that they’ve done this. That part comes back to them a little later on though.

            They’ve only been together for four months before the Justice League finds them, or at least what remains of it. In the life before this one, they grew up looking to heroes like the Green Arrow and the Flash and Supergirl and their friends from the Waverider and many others who they never got the chance to know. They’re all long dead now. Octavia still visits the Black Canary’s grave with him, and Lincoln is accompanied by her when he goes to see Lisa’s grave, which has ‘Golden Glider’ on it. They also visit the graves that belong to Mick, Ray, Martin, Jax, Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, Felicity, Oliver, Diggle, and many others. All the people they once knew are dead now. The saddest thing as that they’re used to it. Reincarnation might be rebirth for them over and over, but it’s also watching any person they’ve ever cared about, family or friend, die.

Being used to it doesn’t make them feel any better though.

            In the last life, the League was in its golden age. Now, it is crumbling to an end. Octavia and Lincoln are recruited by the remaining members to help protect the world. The journals that they have written in their past lives did get discovered years ago, and it’s how the League has found and recruited them now. Together, Lincoln and Octavia fight alongside other members against threats to the city and occasionally the Earth. Sometimes, they wonder whether they would be fighting beside Team Flash and Team Arrow had things gone a bit differently in their first lives.

            Lincoln and Octavia are with the League until its end. The final battle comes with a villain who calls himself Prometheus. He’s as dangerous as he is clever, and dangerous doesn’t even begin to cover him. It is a fight that will leave no survivors, they determine that early.

            At one point, they duck and cover together as another League member distracts their foe. Lincoln suggests they try to distract him to give the others who are still alive enough time to regroup. It’s all too likely they will die in the process, but it gives the people they call their friends in this life a chance to defeat the villain. Octavia agrees before leaning over and pressing her lips against his.

“Me and you,” she reminds him as she squeezes his hand one last time. “Ready?”

“It’s not like we haven’t died before.”

            They only last a few minutes before Prometheus breaks Lincoln’s neck. Octavia cries out before the killer turns and impales her mid-scream upon her staff. But their distraction does given time for the members of the Justice League to rally together to end Prometheus.

* * *

  _STAR Labs Conglomerate, 2149_

            Savage has already started his campaign to take over the world. The Armageddon virus is raging rampant over the globe at this point in the outside provinces. He is using the weakened state of humanity to his advantage. At this point, through Per Degaton, he has taken over the entire continent of Asia. His sights now lie across the water, to the Americas.

            Sara and Leonard are now Leia and Han Williams. Their heads are full of memories from all their other lives, yet they strongly remember everything about Savage and the things that he will be doing. When there are whispers that he is coming for the Americas, they start a rebellion in the conglomerate they live in. When it succeeds, others on the continent are inspired to do the same. Soon, they are all rebels who have overthrown their governments. It actually sets back Savage’s plans to conquer the Earth when revolts take place in the land he has taken over.

            Somehow, Savage learns they are at the head of the rebellions. That they are encouraging ways to find cures for the Armageddon virus. That they are the ones responsible for throwing obstacles in his way. Per Degaton demands their deaths, offering great rewards in exchange for their bodies. People do try to come after them, but after hundreds of years, they’ve gotten good at looking over their shoulders, and catch many of the would-be assassins.

            In the end, Savage does find them himself. He attacks the base that they are currently at in the middle of the night. Most of the other rebels are out on missions to convince those who have not yet rebelled against the conglomerates to do so. Their daughter, Cassandra, is a month shy of two and terrified for her life. Seeing her clutch her beat-up teddy bear reminds them so much of Michael, and how scared he looked when they left him to go back and get the neighbors out. Han and Leia get one of the younger rebels to stay back and hide with Cassie. Han promises that everything will be okay before he and Leia hurry to provide support.

            Both fight hard and take down some of Savage’s soldiers, but it ends when Savage arrives on the scene and quickly impales Han before turning the same blade on Leia. When he stabs her, she flashes back to her first life, when she died in a similar fashion. They fall together, side by side. Their fingertips are brushing against each other’s as they bleed out on the ground. There is nothing that can be done for them. All they wish for right now is that Cassie will be okay, that Savage will not find her.

            A familiar time ship suddenly descends from the sky. They haven’t seen it for a few millennia, but they remember it. There was a life where they named a ship after it. It’s the Waverider. They had their first real conversation together on it. Han wonders who is on board, Leia ponders how long it has been for Rip and the others.

            An earsplitting scream rings through the air moments before a familiar face sprints toward them before dropping to her knees between them. Han and Leia look up at Cassandra Savage’s horrified face. Her eyes are red and puffy, and she’s sobbing. It takes them a moment before they really see her. Han and Leia are looking at the daughter they tried to hide from Savage, only now a grown woman instead of a child. Savage must have found her after all, and taken her to raise as his own.

“Cassie,” Leia whispers, reaching her hand up to brush her daughter’s cheek. “Oh, Cassie.”

“Mother,” her daughter is barely able to get the words out clearly as she looks at her parents. “Father, I’m so sorry.”

Han shakes his head, smiling at his daughter. He can’t help but feel proud that he did get to see the woman she became at least once, even in he didn’t know she was his future daughter at the time. “You don’t have to be.”

Someone else approaches then. It’s Martin Stein, the one from 2016. He’s white as a sheet as he stares at them and their wounds.

“Hello,” he murmurs hesitantly.

Han looks up at his great-grandson. “Do you know?”

“I found out. And I…don’t know what to say.”

Martin does get in a few words to them as the rest of the Waverider crew gathers around them. The friends that they made in their first life, their daughter, and their great-grandson are with them in their last minutes. It’s their first time dying surrounded by people they love.

It’s also the last time they ever see any of these people.

* * *

  _2016_

            The residents of the Waverider learn of the fates of their friends the night after Sara’s death in the final confrontation with Savage. Kendra is unable to stop thinking about how the assassin pushed her aside to take on Savage before the immortal psychopath could kill her. Somehow, it feels like Sara has done this before, but not in this life.

            Her memories of being saved in other lives by Sara (and Leonard too) return in her dreams that night as she sleeps. The following morning, she tells the rest of the team about them. How she is suspicious that maybe, somehow, Sara and Leonard are able to reincarnate too. The others take in her suspicions, but they all agree that they need more proof to prove it is reincarnation and not just people who look similar.

            When they make a trip to STAR Labs in 2016 to return the cold gun (and deliver the news of the losses), the members of Team Flash are waiting for them. All are saddened by the news of Sara and Leonard’s deaths, but they are informed that they went out as heroes. After they’ve processed this, the speedster and his friends tell the time travelers that they have something for them that was delivered earlier to STAR Labs.

It turns out to be journals. Lots and lots of journals. And a bundle of letters, the top one being addressed to Team Legends.

            Rip breaks the Team Legends envelope open in front of all of them. It was written in 1892 by both Sara and Leonard. Their situation is explained on the pages inside. Somehow, they ended up in the past and started reincarnating after they died. Leonard cites the Oculus as to why he reincarnates, Sara thinks it was a combination of the Pit and Savage’s dagger for her. But the bottom line is that they have been reincarnating, and in every life, they find each other.

            The journals are for the team, to let them know their stories. Both doubt that the two of them will ever met the others again. With the journals, their friends can know what has been happening to them. And also so maybe a few more memories might be triggered for Kendra if she reads about lives where they’ve crossed paths with her and Carter’s past selves.

            There’s other letters, one for each person written for each person to read on their own (although Martin has two, with the second one dating in the seventies). But these are saved for later, when everyone can read them in private. So they bid farewell to Team Flash and take the journals back to the Waverider. Everyone ends up taking one to read in the bridge. A different life is held in every set of hands.

            When Jax opens his one dated in the seventies, a sheet of paper falls out. On it is a written list of every name that Sara and Leonard have lived by in all of their lives, along with the years in which they met each other for most of them. Rip gives the names to Gideon to see if they pop up anywhere else in history, along with facial recognition. The center table soon becomes flooded with photos, articles, copies of legal documents, and all sort of other paper trails.

            Everyone spends hours examining the information in the journals and the documents Gideon has found. Over the course of time, they learn their friends have fought in several wars, only surviving a handful of them. There are reports of mysterious vigilante activity in cities during times when they lived in them. Mick finds a police report about a couple in the twenties who ran a gang, cracking a smile when he realizes the two people he was closest too were a pre-Bonnie and Clyde. Kendra discovers a formal picture of herself, Carter, Sara, and Leonard taken during what appears to be the Victorian era, and remembers getting it taken.

            In a few places, there are marriage certificates that are found. They also find out that the couple had six children over the course of time. One of the children, a Michael Jefferson Smith, is Martin’s grandfather, meaning that he is in fact the great-grandson of the assassin and the crook. It stuns all of them into silence as the professor processes this information. He still isn’t speaking when they discover that Cassandra Savage was actually born Cassandra Williams, the daughter of future revolutionaries Han and Leia Williams, aka Sara Lance and Leonard Snart.

            A time jump into the future later, they seek out Cassandra after Savage has disappeared from the time to tell her. She has already learned since then that Savage was not her birth father, but the truth about her birth parents shocks her. Cassandra demands Rip to take her to see them again, proving to be her mother’s child when she pulls out her sword in the middle of the conversation. Martin ends up sticking up for his future grand-aunt, as do the other Legends. They all want to see their friends again just one last time.

            The timeline is somehow complicated, and the only spot where they are able to get to is 2149 on the day Sara and Leonard, or Leia and Han, die. By the time they arrive, Savage has just entered the bunker. Sara and Leonard’s bodies are lying side by side between the entrance the forest that had hidden it. When Cassandra sees her parents like this, she cannot stop herself from screaming and running to them. Martin freezes when he sees them before the others get through to him and make sure he gets to say goodbye to his great-grandparents.

            They are all with Sara and Leonard as they die. Both of them look happy to see all of them again. As Rip watches them die, their fingers brushing against each other’s, he can’t help but feel guilt. He was the one who recruited them, and through his selfish mission, they ended up dying and reincarnating. He doomed them to constant life and death, to watch everyone they love live and die.

* * *

             There is no denying that the universe is cruel, horrible place. Terrible things are bred in it. War, hate, anger, pain, famine, disease, death. All of these plague the ones who try to live in it. Innocence is subtracted over time, and corruption is added in its place. Some adapt to it better than others. This is a place that should be impossible for anything good to be produced from it.

But somehow, it still happens.

            Throughout all the horrible, awful things, there are moments where the universe can be kind. It can create wonderful things. Love, family, friendship, birth, kindness, happiness, joy, hope. Good is allowed to exist amongst all the evil. Miracles can be granted if the universe is listening.

The case of Leonard Snart and Sara Lance is only one example of a miracle.

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it. One Captain Canary reincarnation story. Hopefully I didn't make anyone cry too much.
> 
> Kudos and cookies to you if you were able to pick out some of the couples that I named Sara and Leonard after in this. And I hope that people enjoyed the little surprise that I stuck in here.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a review!


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